No one has suspected his presence. Julian has been relatively safe living in the middle of an evacuated city somewhere in Bulgaria.
This has become the problem. He can’t keep living here. Three months have passed. His food supply dwindles. He must move on.
If his 7th grade geography proves useful, he plans to move southwest, into Turkey traveling south of the Black Sea. If he reaches the Middle East he’ll be at the front lines of the war. This is the only way to go from this location.
From the top of the building, Julian can see in all directions. Most of the small dwellings below appear destroyed. Everything vacant, broken, burned, ash, except for the factory. It never stops breathing smoke. Julian guesses he’ll find the same things in the houses below as he’s found in this apartment: plenty of toiletries, dead families, and discarded possessions, all the remnants scavengers haven’t taken.
East of the village and winding south is a narrow river. Using this river for southward travel, it may lead to the Black Sea. He’ll pack enough supplies and food for a week. Too much weight will make the journey unbearable. With any luck he’ll find a boat. He’ll move during the night and sleep in the day. He’ll creep through each town along the river and follow the red skies of war. He’ll walk directly towards the glow of explosions. The same fire and smoke he’s watched every night from the rooftop. He’ll travel into the center of the battle from behind enemy lines.
His elbow heals. White window shades wave in the morning wind. They are open, letting in the breeze. Plump pigeons perch on the sill like fat, feathered gargoyles. Mechanical laughter clatters below from the factory.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I told you. I have a plan.”
“Oh yes, I forgot about that, your wonderful plan.”
Silence
“It’s not going to work.”
“Yes it will.”
“You’re so sure?”
“Yes.”
“You really think you’ll be able to survive?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“No.”
“You’re brilliant.”
“If you have a better idea, I’m open for suggestions.”
“How about we stay here and keep watching the factory.”
Julian peers through his faint transparent reflection in the window. “We could do that.” He says watching all the little dots of men moving about.
“It is the safer option.”
“I suppose, but…”
“But what?”
“The food won’t last.”
“We can raid the village.”
“It’s dangerous to move about the city.”
“So?”
“So, this isn’t any way to live. I’m sick of scurrying like a rodent.”
“Do we have a choice? ”
“We could go down there and join them. We could work in the factory and wear one of those fancy helmets. We could walk to the tall dark smoke stacks, knock on the front door and ask for an application. We could write a resume. It would say, ‘Local Lonesome Scavenger, looking for occupation and purpose in life. Currently lost family and all possessions. Hoping for new career opportunities. Hard worker.’ They’ll give us the job and we’ll be happy. We’ll work diligently towards the better good of the ultimate goal, one world domination. We’ll work for the Conglomerate!”
Julian’s fists clench. He strikes the wall.
“NEVER!”
Plaster crumbles under his knuckles. One of the factory workers glances strangely upward at the thirteen-story building. Julian doesn’t notice. Nor does he see the man pointing up at him to one of the security personnel. Julian’s thoughts are elsewhere.
“I will never join the Conglomerate. They murdered my family!” Julian falls to his knees. Tears collecting in his eye sockets streak down his face. “She was only four years old.” He buries his face in his palms and weeps. “Never. Never, never.”
Defeated, hunched over and helpless.
This morning Julian found a book to pass the time with. ‘The Stranger,’ by Albert Camus. Luckily, it was in an English translation. He begins reading it, sitting comfortably on the toilet, digesting page after page. A sentence strikes him, page 57, about half way through, “To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.”
To stay here or to go, what difference does it make? It is the same thing, death in here or death out there, what is the difference?
“Yes, what is the difference?”
“Quiet you!”
“Why don’t you go get that fancy gun of yours and suck on the long end of the barrel? Put some teeth marks in it. Shove it deep into your yapping mouth and make this go away. Make it better. Pull the trigger. Make it end. Put you and me out of our misery.”
The book fell in his naked lap. For a minute Julian contemplated this option. It doesn’t sound too bad of an idea. What did surviving another day matter, even if he could make it into the battlefields and help the Alliance, what then? Without Josephine and Helene, he had nothing. The Conglomerate will win in the end. They will take over the world. What use is fighting the inevitable?
“Ok.” He says silently, “You win.”
“It’s about time we come to reason, and agree on something.”
Julian wipes himself with the cotton soft ‘Downy.’ He lifts his pant. His thumb touches the brass flush handle and, he hears voices, footsteps, someone else in the building.
His gun is in the next room.
Three soldiers are on the same floor Julian is on. Their boots stomp outside his front door. Julian has gotten lazy. How could they have snuck up on him so fast?
“Clear.” The soldier in front says into a mouthpiece. The other two follow and repeat.
Room by room, they search the apartments. One man enters, the other two follow, guns forward.
Their uniforms fit to their bodies, tied around the knees and elbows, black leather gloves, gloss black helmets with a silver letter ‘C’ in the center of their foreheads, a blue-tinted visor, their eyes like futuristic sunglasses. Wires connect their helmets to their computerized backs. Tubes stick into their mechanical flesh. Their motions are stern and smooth, like a can opener hungry for tin. A race of machine men, the astonishing product of the factory’s endless hard work.
Julian shuts the lid of the toilet without flushing.
“Clear!”
Shooting all three solders isn’t a possibility. Julian has never fired a weapon in his life. What does he know about killing? A data input analyzer has zero background in arsenal tactics. When his life was normal, back in Paris, when Josephine was alive, and Helene could smile, there was no concern for operating projectile devices.
His gun pulses in his mind, in the next room, propped up against the bed, unable to reach. It is there, sitting, glowing in the daylight. The soldiers are in the hallway. They are at his front door, again, just like before, only this time, he knows why they are here.
The door bursts open.
“Clear!”
Guns raised with perfect aim scan the room, a white sofa, a table of family photos, a set of car keys, a clean dusted end table.
“Clear!”
The small dining room, an extension to the kitchen: pots and pans on the counter, an empty bowl of rice Julian ate last night in the sink, forever to be unwashed.
Black helmets glisten daylight leaking in from the windows.
“Clear!”
The bedroom: blankets and clothes rummaged in a mishap mess across the room, and an unmade bed where Julian slept last night. His Assault Rifle in the corner. A dresser covered in expensive jewelry, silver, and gems, women’s earrings and necklaces hanging from a nude female sculpture. Julian thought Josephine would have loved them.
“Clear!” shouts the mechanical voice.
“There is a weapon here,” the other solder says. “Someone has been here.”
“Could be a scavenger.”
“Could be a scout for the Alliance.” The robot man holds Julian’s weapon and cocks the chamber letting the magazine fall to the floor. “This weapon is empty sir. It has no charge.”
No bullets! Julian thinks almost out loud. I’ve been carrying an empty gun for months without a single bullet!
“No threat sir, probably a scavenger looking for a warm place to stay.”
“Let’s hunt him down.”
The soldier drops the rifle. It crashes to the hardwood floor.
They check the closet.
“Clear.”
They check the bathroom.
“Clear.”
They look through everything.
“The perpetrator might be in another room. Let’s move on.”
Dangling like a spider from its web, Julian hangs from the sill outside. The soldiers move on to the next apartment without checking out the bathroom window. He struggles to pull himself inside, falling to the checkered tile floor. His heart throbbed, and the sound resonated inside his skull. Pigeon droppings coated his hands white.
The soldier’s footsteps echo down the hallway walking further and further away. Julian goes over to his rifle and picks it up. He puts it to his head, and pulls the trigger.
‘Click,’ ‘Click,’ ‘Click,’
Empty. He couldn’t kill himself if he wanted to.
Tonight, at dusk, he decides to leave.
From the rooftop he watches the sun set for the last time. A dark storm rolls in the West. Julian finds a fancy bow tie in the closet. He puts it around his neck like a noose, and carries his only friend like a child holding a teddy bear, the unloaded rifle. The barrel drags behind him down the hallway. In the stairwell, he finds a Conglomerate soldier’s helmet. It must have been left behind during the death raids. It fit like Cinderella’s glass slipper. He smiles for the first time in six months.
He opens the front door into the cold night.
He steps from the building for the first time in months, with gun in hand.
He exits into the dark rain,
waiting,
wishing to die,
a man with nothing.
